Sonic Dragon

From Sonic Retro

Sonic Dragon (音速飛龍 which translates to Speed of Sound Flying Dragon), also known as Speedy Dragon, is a 1995 game for the Super A'Can. Sonic Dragon is a side-scroller with strong similarities to the classic Sonic games, but with a baseball bat wielding kid in the place of Sonic.

The main character has a bit of an attitude in his expressions, which was a part of Sonic's schtick. Besides the main character, there are also gameplay and design similarities. The player has high acceleration and top speed and can also get a burst of speed by using a Super Peel-Out (which takes the place of the Spin Dash). There are also collectibles in the form of baseballs that act as hit points and are deducted by increments of 10 when hit. Springboards, and checkpoint poles which can take the player to a special stage are also present. There are also breakable item boxes. The layout of objects and perspective of the special stage is very reminiscent to Sonic the Hedgehog 2's special stage. The boss of the first level is also pretty similar to Drill Eggman, the first boss in Sonic 2.

The game does have some differences from Sonic games though. The main character doesn't curl into a ball when jumping nor does jumping on an enemy actually hurt them. Instead, the character uses his baseball bat to attack. The inability to curl into a ball can slow down gameplay as it is hard to react quickly to approaching enemies as the player must attack with a short range attack rather than a long range roll (as Sonic would have). The game is also a bit difficult as there are no continues and only 3 lives.